Vertebrate bioacoustics: A tale of three theories

The field of vertebrate bioacoustics has made great progress in understanding how animals produce vocalizations in the last two decades. Much of this progress has involved models originally developed in the context of human speech production, which were later applied to nonhuman animals. I will provide a broad semi-historical overview of this field, highlighting three prominent theories that originated in speech science and then were generalized to other species. My talk will focus on common features that are used by most vertebrates (including humans) to produce their communicative sounds, but also calls attention to numerous interesting exceptions to these general rules.